eucatastrophe n. eucatastrophic [ < Gr. eu, "good" and catastrophe Coined by JRR Tolkien.] 1. (in a narrative) The event that shifts the balance in favor of the protagonist when all seems lost. 2. A happy ending.

December 2009

12/31/2009

I am not sure what to think about the financial
and emotional price that potential lawyers pay to pass this exam and the cost
society accepts when so many of them thereafter feel entitled to compensation
for their work and suffering. A Lawyer
Walks Into a Bar tells the story of a half dozen law graduates as they
prepare for their California State Bar exam, an exam that only three or four
out of ten will pass, though it will consume the lives of thousands and tens of
thousands of people every year. Many will have accumulated $100,000 - $200,000
in debt preparing for the exam and there the financial stakes involved in
passing or not passing are high.

Is this a problem? I tend to think so.
Why? Because all of this money that flows into the coffers of the nations
lawyers and law schools is not flowing into a lot of other things that matter
to me. In a sense, these people are having serious “injury” inflicted on their
lives and it makes sense to me having seen the movie why they feel justified in
“suing” society after they pass it. Having gone through hell to get their
license to practice law, it only makes sense that they want hundreds of dollars
an hour to practice it afterwards, especially if by being good at it, they can
save a person thousands of dollars an hour of THEIR income. It reminds me
somewhat of the way that men would purchase their positions in the Catholic
Church in the late Middle Ages. After
spending the equivalent of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to GET to
be the bishop of Mainz, it only makes sense that that Bishop (Albert) felt
justified in permitting the sale of indulgences in his territories since he got
a cut of the proceeds. And why wouldn’t lawyers feel the same way?

First, they have sacrificed time and
effort and family. Second they have borrowed heavily for law school and bar
exam preparation. Thirdly, they are in the minority who passed. “If there is
one lawyer in town, he or she will starve” one of the lawyers interviewed says
jokingly, “If there are two lawyers, they will do well.”

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise
whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being
a good man. There will still be business enough. Abraham Lincoln

itigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.Ambrose Bierce

This is a period of time that I have
read about but I think never seen in documentary format. Its conclusions can be
summarized as follows:

1.The
Middle East is a region that has experienced difficulty in finding a unifying
ideology. Islam of course has the potential to be that unifying agent but
because there are numerous interpretations of the core texts and of the process
by which leaders should be selected, it has served as much in the cause of
disunity as unity. I suspect that there are inherent problems when the golden
age was brought about by a leader that God chose. How is the Golden Age to be
maintained in the absence of such a legitimatization of leadership?

2.The
Middle East as a region has not been helped in any significant way by the
self-serving interests of outside powers. England, France, Russia, and
eventually Zionism all exacerbated the problems of the region and this can be
seen in the way that it drew borders, attacked opposition to its dismemberment,
and acquired resources, territory, and transportation routes that benefitted
the people and governments outside the region.

Looking at the History of WWI in Europe
and the Middle East, it is fairly self-evident that the lack of respect for
territorial integrity, self-determination, and universal human rights (as
opposed to ethnic interests) led to the needless deaths of millions of people.
WWI was the symptom of a profound human “illness” created by a total imbalance between
technological advancement and moral decay. The notion that technological
advancement in military hardware gave “rights” to people who possessed the
advancement that people who did not forfeited by not having them, was just a
deadly idea, and the more a country adopted it, the more lives they lost as a
result.

“Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conflict, or,
as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little
so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for
the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is, indeed, a
warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest
that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing
civilized nations. ... It is as idle to apply to savages the rules of
international morality which obtain between stable and cultured communities, as
it would be to judge the fifth-century English conquest of Britain by the
standards of today.” – Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West

Theodore Roosevelt wrote his book, The Winning of the West in 1900. Read a
few pages from that introduction, in which he argues that the American war to
obtain colonies in the Philippines was no different in kind really from the war
to acquire the American West and you have all you need to know about the
sources of WWI. All it would take was for other countries to adopt Theodore
Roosevelt’s thinking and the program for species genocide was well under way.

“In our long-settled communities there have always been people who
opposed every war which marked the advance of American civilization at the cost
of savagery. The opposition was fundamentally the same, whether these wars were
campaigns in the old West against the Shawnees and the Miamis, in the new West
against the Sioux and the Apaches, or in Luzon against the Tagals. In each
case, in the end, the believers in the historic American policy of expansion
have triumphed. Hitherto America has gone steadily forward along the path of
greatness, and has remained true to the policy of her early leaders who felt
within them the lift towards mighty things. Like every really strong people,
ours is stirred by the generous ardor for daring strife and mighty deeds, and
now with eyes undimmed looks far into the misty future.”

Theodore
Roosevelt suggests that expansionism is the most important trait of the
American character and celebrates it. Blood and Oil is a documentary about the results
of the ideology. It would be interesting to watch Blood and Oil with Theodore
Roosevelt but he died in January of 1919, three months before the Versailles
Treaty divvied up the land of the Middle East to various colonial power
interests. I suspect he would have applauded unless he took the position that
European powers deserved to just annex the territories they had won with their
armies.

Question
for Comment: Do you think the era of American Imperialism is over? Or has it
just become diluted in an era of corporate imperialism?

12/29/2009

Speaking
Freely is
a fifty minute “conversation” about therole
that international financial and corporate interests play in the maintenance of a
system of global poverty and exploitation. As an opening caveat, there are
people who will argue that this guy is anti-capitalist, pro-communist,
anti-American, and even a propagandist for the shrill political left.

One Netflix reviewer states,

“This guy is
delusional. LIBERAL PROPAGANDA... he claims we are making other countries worse
off by building infrastructure and power plants...ALL LIBERAL/COMMUNIST
PROPAGANDA”

All I would say is, take a look at other
documentaries about the economic relationship between the developed and the
developing world and you will see similar arguments being made. View the
argument critically and compare it with your own experiences of life. Are
people ever altruistic? Examine the loans that institutions like the IMF and the
World Bank give out. Look at the “conditionalities” in the agreements that
these countries have to sign to get these loans. Take a look at the companies
that benefit and how well their CEO’s are being paid.

But let me summarize the argument for
you. John Perkins claims that he was part of the system that sought to
basically “enslave” – perhaps too harsh a word? – “render as perpetual
sharecroppers” – entire countries. The system as he described it worked like
this. And I am only summarizing here. I am not close enough to the actual
system to have seen it work this way myself:

Perkins says that what he would do when
he was working as an economic consultant for these corporations is draw up a
prospective prediction on how much economic profit a country would realize if
the IMF or World Bank were to loan the money to a country to allow a said corporation to – say – build a building or a power
grid or a water treatment facility there. Perkins says that he would significantly
inflate the prospective yield, thus encouraging the country to accept the loan
that he knew it would not be able to repay. Later, when it became clear that
the said country could not pay back the loan, because the predictions were not
realistic, the IMF then could assert much more pressure. It can then say, “Well,
in order to get the loan reduced or forgiven or in order to get more loans, you
have to agree to privatizing certain sectors of your infrastructure. When
privatization occurs, then foreign companies can easily move in and buy up
those businesses and services and begin to profit from them. In this way, the
money is made by the countries who loaned the money and the foreign aid works
to the benefit of the corporations.

And here is where Perkins’ argument gets
even more nefarious. It is his assertion that the leaders of these countries
are induced, either by bribery or by threats to sign away the deals that will
benefit the companies that want to own the resources of that country and sell
them on the global market. Perkins contends that these corporations are often
perfectly willing to send in “jackals” (assassins) to vacate the posts of
resistant leaders of developing countries. They prefer to work by means of corrupt
bribes he insists but … they are not conscience stricken if they have to apply
more Machiavellian means.

In the end, he argues, it does not
matter if a Democrat or a Republican is in office, the end result is the same
because the “corpratocracy” controls the machinery that elected officials use
and that provides the funds for them to win elections.

It all goes back to Senator Hammond’s “Mudsill
theory”.

“In all social
systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery
of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little
skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must
have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization,
and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political
government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to
build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.”

John Rawls would argue that the problem
of the “mudsill theory” arises as soon as you picture yourself being born into
that mudsill.

Alas, I think we may all be compromised
in some ways. We want products at low prices. We want our investments to
double. We appreciate it when our brothers, who work for large corporations,
loan us a thousand dollars. Perkins’ argument is well made and even if not
totally true, will eventually cause the “bad guys” to move on to some other way
of profiting from the exploitable poor. I am sure those new ways are already
being brewed up in the laboratories of human injustice labs.

Question for Comment: Have you ever been
on the receiving end of exploitation?

Unsettled. Perfect title
for an intensely dramatic look at one of the most civil of modern civil wars.
If one is willing to remember that there is a Palestinian element to the
evacuation of Gaza and does not demand that one documentary cover it along with
the complex array of Israeli points of view, Unsettled is a highly worthwhile documentary to watch. It does not
claim to examine all points of view. It merely attempts to expose an assortment
of Israeli points of view. But nowhere does it state that Palestian points of
view are unimportant. They are simply not the concern of this film. It leaves a viewer with multiple questions.

Will all of the Israeli settlements on
the West Bank experience something similar someday? Can this experience give
Israeli society a glimpse into the pain of the Palestinian losses of their
homes? How does the evacuation of Jews by Jews differ from the process by which
Arabs are evacuated by Jews or the process by which many Jews were evacuated
from their homes in Arab countries? How would such an evacuation look if it
were one of these people’s army evacuating the other’s population in the
future? What was the purpose of destroying homes in the Gaza settlements after
they were evacuated? Should this movie have explored that question? Would it be
possible for Arabs and Jews to empathize with the pain of each other’s losses
in a way similar to the way many of these soldiers empathized with the settlers
they were evicting? What is the tie that causes a person to be free to
empathize with someone that they disagree with so radically?

There are, of course, many arguments
concerning the evacuation in Israel and abroad. Many will argue that the same
thing should have happened with West Bank settlements. Many will argue that the
evacuation only served to make the possibility of a Palestinian State more
impossible (So many of the Gaza settlers relocated to West Bank settlements). In
an October 6, 2004, interview Dov Weisglas, Sharon's chief of staff, stated:

"The
significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process...
When you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian
state and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.
Disengagement supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there
will not be a political process with the Palestinians."

Throughout the movie, it was obvious
that many settlers are so focused on their own agendas, dreams, aspirations,
and theological beliefs, they could not really comprehend the same in the
Palestinian people of Gaza living on the other side of the fences. People were so full of their own pain, their
own grief, their own loss, there did not seem to be room for someone else’s.
And that always seems to be the problem in this world. A problem we all are a
part of.

Question
for Comment:
What is a decision of your own government that you have felt like resisting?

Its Christmas Vacation week and time for some entertaining
movies with the boys. It causes me to wonder what is so inevitably compelling
about the story of the teenage boy discovering that he has special powers
accompanied by an inescapable destiny, opposed by a diabolically powerful and
ambitious enemy, encouraged by a young and beautiful woman who looks good in a
dress or in armor.

It just amazes me
that this same plot line will work again and again and again. And I believe
that it will work a million more times before it is done. It is unfortunate for
Crusade: A March Through Time that
the whole idea of a children’s crusade is probably based on nine tenths legend
and one part mistranslation because it would make a fun introduction to a Jr.
High study of the Middle Ages and the Crusades. As for Eragon, it uses just about every convention in the book for
delivering a feel good movie to a teenage boy. The common boy picks up an egg
in the woods and acquires a dragon, a mentor, a mission, a girl, an arch enemy,
and secret magical powers all in one grand life change.

Eventually, they will have to start coming out with books
about boys who save the world because they are the only ones without powers of any kind.

12/28/2009

Disfigured is a
movie that speaks to anyone who has to deal with their own body. Its odd, but
we forget that “we” are body but that we also relate to it. We like it or
dislike it. We love it or abuse it. We spoil it or deprive it. We love it or
neglect it. We hide it or show it off. We are proud of it or ashamed of it or
afraid of it sometimes.

This is a movie that focuses on a relationship between two
women and their individual relationships to the bodies they live with. It does
a nice job though in demonstrating that issues relating to our physical selves
and body image are not exclusively problems for women, though I think it is a
video that presents an insiders look into the problems that guys are causing or
not helping to heal.

In broader terms, this movie is about how we internalize
prejudice and how we damage ourselves by doing so. I cannot help but see a
powerful linkage between the message it delivers and that found ion Toni
Morison’s The Bluest Eye.

The Reckoning is a
morality play performed for us by a troupe of Medieval morality players. It is
a movie about speaking truth to power and the complexity of such acts when the
speaker too is guilty of something. “Those who seek justice, fall prey to it,”
a falsely accused woman’s father insists, warning the players not to try and
meddle in exposing the local Lord, Robert de Guise, for the pedophile and
murderer that he is. Led by Nicholas, a
fallen priest and fugitive murderer, the acting troupe revises the story of the
murder that they had earlier mis-presented, this time, condemning the actual
guilty parties instead of the officially accused ones.

While the movie is not entirely faithful to the book, I tend
to think in many ways, it added some interest to it. In the movie, there are
several different deaths that require thinking about. The troupe of players
kills their leader, Brenden because he has been smitten with stomach cancer and
begs to be relieved. Nicholas kills the husband of the woman he is caught in
adultery with in what appears to be an act of self-defense. Nicholas is killed
by de Guise in the church as Nicholas is claiming sanctuary there. The Lord de
Guise actually kills the boy (cruelly) and lastly, the mob later kills De Guise
in an act of mob reprisal for the children he has killed. A monk is also killed
by de Guise in his attempt to cover up his previous murder but we arent’ really
encouraged to pity him because of his profiteering off the misery of the poor.

I know it seems like a lot of killing (it is, after all,
life in the feudal system) but I tend to think that the movie is exploring the
nature of justice and injustice and the gradations of guilt that are attributed
to various kinds of killing. The subtext of the movie, never made overt but
certainly present is that mercy killings are actually ethically acceptable;
that self defense killings are morally understandable, that cruel killings are
reprehensible, that legal executions are similarly morally intolerable if not
controlled by principles of justice, and that mob killings, if the victim be guilty,
are not unreasonable. The King’s Justice (a position in Feudal times) argues
that all the people are complicit in Robert De Guise’ murders because they know
about it and do nothing out of fear.

From the point of view of philosophical ethics, the movie
suggests that what makes the taking of another life “evil” – “tolerable” or
“good” has to do with motive. Why an act is done and to whom is ultimately what
matters.

All in all, it is a tale well played and if you don’t think
about it, the sort of story that is likely to shape a person’s outlook on a
complex ethical question. When, if ever, is killing someone right? Or is it
ever?

12/26/2009

There are about 75 stories in the Anchor Book of Arabic Fiction edited by
Denys Johnson-Davies and I think I was able to connect to about 20-25 of them
in some way.

Mohammad Abdul-Wali’s Ya Khabir is a story involves a lawyer
and a soldier arguing with the soldier concluding that he exploits and steals
from the populace no more than the lawyers who happen to simply do it legally.

Leila Abuzeid’s The Discontented is about a peasant who pleads for a better job but
when given an opportunity, the responsibilities of it intimidate him and he
declines to take it. It is a story about how our perceptions of ourselves limit
what we will attempt to do even if we say we want to do it.

Abu Gubeir’s Have You Seen Alexandria Station? is a story about a man who believes
himself to be in love with his wife’s sister, making up a story as a means of
communicating that reality. It is a story about the relationship between love,
marriage, honesty, and dishonesty.

Sherif Hetata’s The Net is a story about love at first sight and the rare phenomenon
that occurs when two people have the exact same experience at the same moment
and wonder what it means and whether they should pursue it.

Ulfat Idbilbi’s Damascus Bitter Sweet is a “Romeo and Julliet” story about the
forbidden affections of young people. “But when did lovers ever despair? They
alone know how to devise ways of getting together, regardless of the obstacles
and of the vigilance of others.”

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’a In Search of Wallid Massoud is a Palestinian
story about devotion to Palestine and the conflict between the desire to live
normal lives and the desire to regain lost homeland. “Wasted is the time that
we do not spend in love …”

Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun is story about a man smuggling human beings across
the border into better lives and the tragedy of what happens to them. It would
be a great story for starting a discussion of borders and opportunity and what
drives people to take risks with their lives to obtain a chance at life itself.

Ibrahim al-Koni’s The Ill-Omend Golden Bird is about the temptation to sell our
souls, either to evil or to materialism. It reminds me of Steinbeck’s The Pearl or Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown.

Sabri Moussa’s Benevolence is a disturbing story about an “honor killing” of
sorts, revealing the cultural foundations of what is no doubt a controversial
subject in Arab society, unwanted teenage pregnancies. I should note that there
were many more stories in this anthology that focused on issues of sexuality
than I would have anticipated.

One
of my favorite stories (perhaps because it was funny in a Twain sort of way)
was Muhammad al Murr’s Your Uncle was a Poet.
It is about an aspiring poet with
Walter Mitty like dreams of greatness that come crashing in on him at the end.

Emily Nasrallah’s A House Not Her Own it occurs to me, good be a good story about the
psychological realities of refugee status in the Middle East and what it might
feel like to find oneself “taking shelter” when your home is destroyed (as is
the experience of many in the region).

Yusuf
al Qu’id’s Three Meaningless Tales is
another favorite, dealing with the issue of wealth, class, poverty, and
exploitation.

Alifa Rifaat’s And Incident in the Ghobashi Household could be read with Benevolence (see above) o initiate a
conversation about women and unwanted pregnancies in conservative societies.

Nawal al Saadawi is, I discovered, a
controversial author who has been heavily criticized for her work on the place
of women in Egyptian society. Her story She
has No Place in Paradise delivers a stinging attack on the way that a
certain form of Islam has been used to subjugate women in Saadawi’s society. In
the story, an Egyptian peasant woman arrives in heaven only to discover that it
is a place no less discriminatory and unpleasant than the existence she has
left. It is not difficult to see why she was threatened by the fundamentalists.
She pulls no punches. Of her experience she wrote: "Danger has been a part
of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous
than truth in a world that lies."

Hanan al Shakh’s The Persian Carpet is the only story in the anthology I had read
before and depicts a moment in a young girl’s life when she loses her trust in
her mother.

Bahaa Taher’s Love in Exile is about the war in Lebanon and the difficulty that
staying connected and empathetic with people in these war zones presents when
making new attachments to people who do not share that concern. It is about
desensitization that occurs when people are not present with the people who
suffer from war.

Abdel Salam al-Ujaili’s The Dream is about the battle for hearts
and minds of people that between secular (scientific) leaders and religious
leaders. This is one that I think would be well worth discussing more.

As I said, there were almost 75 stories
in this book. These were just some that piqued my interest more than others. I
hope I get to discuss some of them in some future global classroom experience.

Question for Comment: What is a culture
whose stories interest you? Why?

12/25/2009

In the movie, Conspiracy, a group of German officers is portrayed, sitting around
a table deciding the fate of Europe’s Jews. In Masterpiece theater’s God on Trial, a group of Jewish men, the
consequence of the decisions made in Conspiracy,
sits around a blockhouse at Auschwitz deciding the fate of God. At first, the
charge is murder. But this is changed to breach of contract. God is accused of
violating the terms of a covenant He is said to have made with this people.

The film cannot claim to be recreating
some actual trial (though the movie Conspiracy
is based on notes taken at the Wannsee Conference.) Essentially, God on Trial makes use of
a setting to ask questions that must have been asked. My friend Michael, who
teaches high school humanities, said that he used this film in conjunction with
the reading of the book of Job, an ancient Hebrew book about the question of
human suffering and the nature of God. One might also use it in conjunction
with a study of the Hebrew book of Habakkuk as it too is addressing the
morality of God and the reality of human tragedy.

In the course of the film, a number of
attempts are made to reconcile personal and collective calamity with the
conviction that the universe is governed by a wise, benevolent, and omnipotent
God. One man argues that God is justified in using harsh methods in creating
something beautiful. Another man argues that God is justified in bringing calamity
upon people who deserve it. Another man argues that the idea of God is an
illusion that grown up children cling to. Another man argues that God simply
changes His mind – that He is neither just nor unjust but that He simply fights
“for you and your team” sometimes and against you and your team at others so
that everyone gets to feel what it is like to have God as an enemy. His argument
is that God is not good. He is merely capriciously favorable and then
unfavorable to you. One man argues that even if the whole idea of God is a
myth, it is an essential myth and that it must be maintained. One man argues
throughout that the question itself is doomed to remain unanswered, arguing
that we humans at no time have a perceptual command of the facts that might
render our judgment worth anything.

Throughout the film, different men argue
from different premises. Some argue as though the History recorded in the Torah
is infallible and can be depended on to unlock the key to understanding God and
their personal tragedies. Other men argue
from the standpoint of the scientist. Others argue simply from the standpoint
of their own self interest. For them, survival, not truth, is what matters. I
suspect that everyone who watches a movie like this will see certain questions
as particularly relevant and certain questions as particularly insightful. For
me that one statement was an objection that one of the judges offers for
rejecting one of the “believer’s” arguments. “No No No This will not do,” he
says, “You are asking us to accept predictions as evidence.”

This is something I often find to be the
case when a person’s realities do not coincide with their convictions. If you
can’t make sense of your present, it can be beneficial to the task of regaining
a stable faith to rely more heavily on the past or the future. You focus on
stories that indicate that God was
just in the past or stories that indicate that He will be in the future.
Somehow, in some psychological way, these records and these predictions outvote
present day observations two to one. You can see this response clearly illustrated in the New Testament book of Hebrews 11, where the history of faith and the future of faith is focused on in contradiction to the difficulties of the present.

All in all, the movie cannot be said to
give a historical account of how millions of people spent their last day in Auschwitz,
but it can provide an introduction to a fascinating theological debate that has
been going on for thousands of years.

For another film produced with a similar purpose in mind, see The Quarrel. It deals with two different responses to the same tragedy, telling the story of two Jews who meet many years after the events in question to debate the meaning of their personal tragedies.

Question
for Comment:
How do you explain the suffering you have been the recipient of in this life?

12/22/2009

What is the name of the watershed that
supplies your water? Do you know? Here is a map of the watersheds of the State
where I live. You can see that I am in the Otter Creek watershed. Assume for a
moment that Walmart or Microsoft or Halliburton or Enron or Monsanto
Corporation bought the water rights to all the water that falls into the Otter
Creek watershed. Lets say that they donated 10% of the profits they could
acquire for doing so to the candidates and politicians and parties that gave
them those rights. Lets say that I am not completely dependent on this company
for my water.

Now let’s assume that this is a multinational
company that can sublet those water rights or cart the water away to be sold
somewhere else in the world where people have more money and the demand is
higher. So, if I go and complain that I
do not like the price of the water I am being sold, I will be told that I can buy my water from
some other company. Let’s assume that the company is run by a CEO who feels
morally obligated to his own paycheck and that is determined by how happy he
makes company investors who live in other parts of the world, maybe Saudi
Arabia, maybe China, maybe Brazil. Investors that have no stake in whether I have enough water or not. This is a the way that oil is bought and
sold. And it is the way that water is
heading.

This movie has been created to circumvent
that process and to give people information and perspective that would lead
them to oppose the privatization of water as a commodity. Obviously, there is a
predisposition to hold suspect private companies and perhaps with good reason.
Lately, many private companies have shown that the bottom line is what company
CEO’s use for a conscience. It is part of the reason that the United States is
presently in the process of DE-privatizing the banking and healthcare economy in
the U.S. People are fed up with CEO’s getting millions for what they regard as “unethical
practices”.

But before we get all self righteous, we
have to ask ourselves, where were those companies getting the money to pay
those CEO’s to do that? And the answer is often “from the investments that we
were demanding those CEO’s to make profitable for us.” And here is the rub. I
began this post by asking if you know the name of your water source. I will end
by asking, if you have invested money, do you know if some of those investments
are going to support companies that are privatizing water?

Like the water cycle, the money that
funds those companies is coming from somewhere, going somewhere, and having an
effect in between.

This video argues for more public
control and less private control of essential commodities. I wonder if that is
as sure a solution as the film-makers would have us believe. If you change the
rules, how long will it be before the same people will be found benefitting
from them?